Inner Sanctum
by crankyhermit
Summary: Jack contemplates archaeology, patience, death and Daniel Jackson.


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Inner Sanctum

* * *

Part one: Things left behind

Leave them: these relics and artifacts,   
The bones and playthings of strangers,   
Dead so long that their heirs do not remember them,  
Being dead themselves.

Only you do - who else would care to learn  
How they lived and died, and everything in between;  
If they were loved;  
If they had lost someone to foolishness or fate;  
If some lesson could be gleaned from these dusty mementos;  
Some wisdom gained from their silent remains and   
Language that has lost all sense and purpose,   
Meaningless designs, mere doodles etched in   
Clay, or whatever materials you find.

As if understanding all these could save history from another   
Tedious loop, repeating tired, tragic tales like yours and mine...

Yet all your time, all your effort and your tears will avail you   
Nothing.  
Unveil their entombed secrets and their treasures.  
Make their language give up its secrets.  
Learn the significance of these buried things, but  
You will never know what they were.

How can you even imagine you could begin to fathom these   
Strangers when the artifacts of your own people mystify you?

See this stuffed toy on a child's bed, worn with much handling,  
Salty with tears.

Was it the favorite plaything of a child who carried it   
Everywhere he went, held it through fevers and nightmares   
And such minor afflictions as a skinned knee,  
Clutching it for comfort while his mother tended the hurt;  
Something to cling to in place of an absent father  
When no one would say where he had gone and  
If he would return?

Just something given to a child who had lost  
Everything, something for him to hold because his tenders   
Have no time to spare for him, being preoccupied with   
A hundred other parentless children.

Or perhaps it was something a parent could touch, and  
Remember a child lost untimely... What can you hope to learn,   
Analyzing how old it was, or how it was made?

When comes our turn to be the dusty fragments of a ruined civilization,  
Who will remember us, or care?

...

Part two: Waiting

I hate waiting - loathe it with the kind of passion you reserve for  
Hollow-voiced puppeteers with glowing eyes and your   
Confounded dusty histories and linguistic mysteries.

Yet I indulge you, time and again, pausing when   
I should have dragged you along and kept you by me, safe.  
A breath here, a heartbeat there - irretrievable moments of   
My life cast away and accumulated into eternity while you sought   
Answers, solutions, the meaning of life.

Should I have listened then, that first time you said,  
"Wait for me," with such quiet desperation and such   
lovely, tragic strength lying broken in your arms,   
deadly treachery waiting at our feet?

How could I fault you in this, deny you the possibility   
I would have given the world for, once?

Life goes on, and I wait   
(with more helpless patience than good grace)  
For you to be done with whatever   
Worthless antique has charmed your  
Wayward attention this time, somber butterfly. 

Though I should never have waited, really - not  
That first time, nor all the times after.  
I didn't have to, never did.

All the times I forgot to wait: having   
Lost all your trust, found too much trouble,  
Lost my way home, found myself dying,   
Lost all hope. Yet you found me, and seek me still.

I can take you for granted or leave you behind,  
Take you for crazy or leave you for dead -  
(and I have)  
You'll find some way through, reach me again,  
Find your way back, as you always do.  
(please)

Don't keep me waiting.

...

Part three: Worms

Remember how we found them; those desiccated bodies that were SG-9?   
Half-buried in the shifting sands amidst the ruins, almost invisible,   
One lying in a pit by himself, his useless tools all about him...  
For all the world like one of your archaeological sites freshly uncovered.

Unreal. They seemed so then, nothing like the dead I am accustomed to.   
Lost but a week, and already they seemed a hundred years dead,   
All dried up and forgotten by life, unrecognizable and unwanted.   
We brought them back, but it made no difference; we did not know them.

No one did. Nothing at all like the moist carcasses in my past that I still   
Remember so clearly. The flies disputed over rights to such rich breeding grounds  
While pale maggots swarmed urgently on every available surface.  
If they had no family to claim them, at least they knew they were wanted. 

In the private space where I preserve my fondest memories, those rare   
untainted moments of joy: seeing the rightness of a child's bright smile   
and the restful companionship of trusted friends, treasured minutes of   
peace stolen between bloody engagements...

Here is where they grow and feed, like patient and inexorable worms,  
The dreams creeping into treacherous sleep that is ally to both life and death,   
Mingling with blood and decay these precious images. 

Knowledge avails little in the face of such unreasoning darkness; it but  
Feeds the insubstantial worms that crawl among the laughing eyes and   
Soft smiles, reuniting the living flesh of memory with the   
Carrion flesh of reality eternally after.

You reside here also, my imperishable friend, joining untimely the ranks of   
Beloved carcasses who once were living. Dead more times than I can count,  
Yet living still, you are the only precious thing that lasts, the one   
Incorruptible constant I know.

Here in my heart, I have given you to the worms   
so you may live eternally in my memory as the others do

(or they may die in you).

* * *

Written...a long time ago. I can't remember when. Before Meridien, or Meridian spoilers even.


End file.
